I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

…Oh, Cory. I really am disappointed in the man; it’s such an easy error to avoid.

Here’s the background: Democratic gubernatorial Senatorial [oops!] nominee Cory Booker apparently has been stretching things a bit when it comes to his friend “T-bone,” a fellow from the streets with a somewhat, ah, useful habit of saying or doing just what Cory Booker turned out to need him to say or do. National Review lowers the boom:

The T-Bone tale never sat right with Rutgers University history professor Clement Price, a Booker supporter who tells National Review Online he found the mayor’s story offensive because it “pandered to a stereotype of inner-city black men.” T-Bone, Price says, “is a southern-inflected name. You would expect to run into something or somebody named T-Bone in Memphis, not Newark.”

Price considers himself a mentor and friend to Booker and says Booker conceded to him in 2008 that T-Bone was a “composite” of several people he’d met while living in Newark. The professor describes a “tough conversation” in which he told Booker “that I disapproved of his inventing such a person.” “If you’re going to create a composite of a man along High Street,” he says he asked Booker, “why don’t you make it W. E. B. DuBois?” From Booker, he says, “There was no pushback. He agreed that was a mistake.” Since then, references to T-Bone have been conspicuously absent from Booker’s speeches.